There exist plug connectors as are known from the State of the Art in many design embodiments, such as mono-pole or bi-pole models, in insulating-material housings that are arranged in series or blocks, whereby the insulating-material housings include at least one contact insert shaped from band material and on whose at least one end is mounted a spring-force element in the form of a pivot spring. Further, the plug connector is equipped with at least one socket contact to plug the connection terminal onto a pin contact of a circuit board or electrical device. The plug connector thus serves to provide for at least one electrical conductor an electrical contact and attachment to a conductor path on a circuit board. As a rule, such plug connectors consist of a housing made of an insulating material that is preferably so shaped that the mono-pole individual terminals may be arranged in a series so that multi-pole socket strips may be formed. Or the housing made of insulating material is configured in a block so that the contact inserts are inserted into the first housing and subsequently may be enclosed by the second housing half using known snap closures.
Plug connectors of this type are a mass product. This results in the requirement that connection of the electrical conductors and also the release of electrical conductors be rapid and without problems. This particularly applies when the electrical conductors to be connected (which as a rule is one incoming and one outgoing electrical conductor per individual terminal) must sometimes be fed to the terminal from the one direction or from the other depending on the application. Therefore, the plug connector includes an actuation part to open the contact point in the form of a press element that is inserted into the housing as an axially-pivotable pushrod that includes at least one admission port to receive an electrical conductor. The actuation part acts as a wedge that is pressed between the terminal leg and the abutment or current rail in order to separate the terminal leg from the abutments and/or from the clamped conductor.
Such plug connectors are sufficiently known from the State of the Art, and may, for example, be taken from the product catalog “Leiterplattenanschluss COMBICON 2005” TNR 5169412/12/31/2004-00 from the company Phoenix contact GmbH & Co KG. The disadvantage to this connection technique is that during disconnection an actuation part is required per electrical conductor, and that the actuation device of the actuation part may be operated only in parallel to the insertion direction of the electrical conductor. If such a connection terminal is plugged into the pin contacts at an angle to the circuit board, the pin contacts would be bent upon actuation of the actuation part because the force required to actuate the actuation part in order to release the contact pressure of the terminal legs from the electrical conductor is no longer in parallel to the electrical conductor, but rather at a perpendicular to the pin contacts.
An electrical connection terminal of the above-mentioned type is known from DE 198 38 008, which will be viewed as the newest State of the Art. It involves a print terminal to be connected to circuit boards that includes the terminal-system principle consisting of a actuation part and a spring element.
The clamping force for the electrical conductor is created from the elastic terminal legs bent inward in the spring boxes. The actuation part is in the form of a translating pressing device, whereby the actuation part is made of one piece and serves to receive multiple electrical conductors. It acts as a wedge upon the opening of the contact points that are pressed between the terminal legs and the abutments in order to separate the terminal legs from the abutments and/or from the clamped electrical conductor. This known arrangement is provided for two contact points, but the disadvantage here is also the fact that the actuation device of the actuation part may only be operated in parallel to the insertion direction of the electrical conductor.
Additional terminals with actuation parts are known from the State of the Art, such as for example from DE 36 21 369 A1, WO 01/47067 A1, and DE 102 44 480 A1. The content of the revelations will not be addressed in detail here. But the disadvantage to all these embodiment examples is that the force to be exerted on the presser part may only be in one direction. The disadvantageous actuation direction of a translating presser part that is mounted perpendicular to the pin contacts is visible from the Figures of DE 102 44 480.
It is therefore the task of the present invention to provide a connection terminal using spring technology of the type mentioned at the outset that avoids the above-mentioned disadvantages of known configurations and a technical solution that enables a more cost-effective plug connector with simple functional geometry and that is universally applicable for circuit board connections.